Track Owner Duchossois `Fine' After Heart-valve Maintenance

Racetrack mogul Richard Duchossois was admitted to the intensive-care unit at the University of Chicago Hospitals on Thursday for a previously scheduled heart maintenance procedure and is expected to be released this weekend.

The procedure was in the same realm as an angioplasty, according to Paul O'Connor, a spokesman for Duchossois, who owns Arlington International Racecourse.

Doctors began working on his heart valve about 7 a.m. Thursday, and the procedure was completed at about 11 a.m., O'Connor said.

"He was fine (afterward)," O'Connor said Thursday night. "He was alert. He was all smiles.

"By noon (Thursday), I was receiving orders."

O'Connor said the procedure was scheduled in advance, and Duchossois knew as early as six weeks ago that he needed to have the procedure performed.

He said Duchossois, who is in his early 70s, had delayed the procedure until after the Illinois Racing Board's meeting Tuesday, when the panel approved a compromise by area track owners to keep Arlington open in 1995.

Gov. Jim Edgar apparently had known about the procedure and had urged Duchossois to get it taken care of soon, to which Duchossois replied that "he knew what his priorities were," in a reference to saving the track, O'Connor said.

Duchossois underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery in 1981 and was at the U. of C. Hospitals in August to undergo a procedure to unclog an artery. Thursday's procedure was to ensure that his arteries had not reclogged, O'Connor said.

"I don't think it was very serious," O'Connor said. "He knew in his mind the risk in any procedure."

Duchossois had been embroiled in a tense standoff with the state in recent weeks because he had wanted the legislature to grant him a casino license, but the matter never came up in the fall veto session.

At one point he closed Arlington, threatening horse racing statewide, but the last-minute compromise saved the 1995 season.

Arlington Heights Village President Arlene Mulder said that Duchossois has had circulatory problems before.

"He's had a couple of angioplasties, the last one was just before the Arlington Million (in August)," she said. "I was concerned about him. But the day of the press conference when he announced Arlington was closing (last week), I thought that he looked good, very firm and strong."